AVI-FAUNA. 53 



commonly called, but more correctly, sugar-birds ; and these, 

 although not very nearly allied to the humming-birds, are 

 sufficiently like them in general appearance to deceive any 

 but a practised naturalist. They have the same brilliant 

 metallic hues, one of them being very beautiful, " with its 

 bright-green body shaded with violet, the large feathers of 

 the wings brown edged with green, a violet band on the 

 breast, succeeded by one of brown and yellow beneath." 



But I must not dwell longer on the avi-fauna of the 

 island. There are numbers of beautifully-coloured birds which 

 are shown in exquisitely tinted lithography in the work of 

 Messrs. Pollen and Van Dam, Dutch naturalists, and in M. 

 Grandidier's magnificent work, of which only four volumes 

 of the promised twenty-eight are yet published. It must suffice 

 here to say, in brief, that, in addition to the birds already 

 noticed, the thrushes, warblers, bulbuls, orioles, cuckoo and 

 other shrikes, fly-catchers, hoopoes, pigeons, goat-suckers, 

 flower-peckers, weaver- finches, wagtails, rollers, bee-eaters, 

 pittas, swallows, and swifts are all represented among the 

 Passeres and Picaria?, inhabiting chiefly the woods ; and that 

 grouse, partridges, quails, peafowl, snipes and curlew, herons 

 and bitterns, flamingoes, storks, and spoonbills are all among 

 the birds inhabiting the open country, and living in the water 

 and by the seashore. 



But, as already remarked, the ornithology of Madagascar 

 is more remarkable for the specialty of many of its forms, 

 and for the remote affinities of several of the birds, than for 

 the beauty or strangeness of appearance of many individual 

 members of the avi-fauna ; and it is also most curious that 

 several families which are peculiar to Africa and well re- 

 presented there are entirely absent from Madagascar. 



The JEpyornis maximus. — Before, however, referring to the 

 inferences which have been drawn from the anomalous fauna 

 of Madagascar, there is one other bird which must be 

 mentioned, not indeed one of its present inhabitants, but so 

 recently extinct that it cannot be overlooked in considering 

 the animal life of the country and its neighbouring islands. 

 Of course I refer to that gigantic struthious bird the 

 JEpyornis, which, if not the largest of all birds, certainly laid 



